Grafting a family tree
41
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Dave and I arrive in Michigan midday, his steady hand mending mine since liftoff. We stock up on groceries en route to our rental; the grocery cart a cherished walker as I navigate the animated aisles—boxes of cereal and soup cans a kaleidoscopic hellscape. I’m a collision of sensations and emotions so the only option is to go with it. During the one-hour drive to our cabin, I look out the window and enjoy temporary relief from symptoms—as long as I’m in passive motion, the 24/7 rocking, bobbing, and swaying disappear. And not just a little— completely. But as soon as the car stops, even if for just a moment, sensations return full force and clobber. I learn with time to do a slow, 2 mph creep at stoplights so the tsunami of motion doesn’t hit while obeying traffic signals.
Our rental is on Crystal Lake, Michigan’s inland-Mediterranean, the Brauer family cottage twenty minutes down shore near the sleepy town of Beulah. Carol and Janet have already arrived, enjoying their sisterly bond and buzzing with anticipation. I buzz too, but like a downed line, arcing and sparking with anxiety.
My body needs cycles and seasons to metabolize, traveling not at the speed of thought, but at the speed of inhale — sunrise—exhale — sunset. Winter—spring—summer—fall. My organs and humors take time to integrate and digest new, foreign nutrients. They understand the natural necessity of death and rebirth. But my ego doesn’t trust this pace, she’s scared to unravel into uncertain chaos.
I lay sleepless all night as waves of electricity course through my ribs, someone’s ribs—this isn’t my body any longer. Someone’s ears listen to water lapping ashore. Someone’s brain pretends she’s at sea, that waves underneath a mattress are normal. Time is slow and thoughts are both intrusive and out of reach.
this can’t go on, why are you so bent out of shape? no one wants to see you like this, no one will love you like this, you’re not safe, you’re not safe, you’re not safe
We rest our first day. Rest—less an actual reset as much as avoiding variables of unpredictability. When horizontal—the bed bouncing up and down—I pray, I visualize, I mental acupuncture myself. When standing, I pretend dad or God or a friendly ghost is slow dance rocking me.
Late afternoon, in search of temporary relief, we drive around the lake to visit Charlie’s memorial bench. Like a blissed dog, I hang my head out the window—unfailingly calm and still when in motion. I cast myself in an endless roadtrip. When we reach Charlie’s bench in the quiet harbor town of Frankfurt, we park the car and the waves return.
The bench is flanked by two, healthy, red maples. I want to be flanked by two red maples, rooting me into solid ground. I sit on it and look out at the quiet harbor scene and imagine my biological father setting sail for the last time.
The plaque on the bench reads:
Charles Phillip Brauer
1949–1985
Journeyed from this port, September 23rd, 1985 bound for Sturgeon Bay. His years of sailing experience were no match for the deadly Lake Michigan storm. These trees and bench are placed as a memorial to Charles honoring his relationship with nature and its powerful beauty. He was loved and will be missed. “Now rest beneath blue waters — let praise to thy creator rise.” — Brauer family — 1986
The ground bobs up and down as I read the dedication, imagining my biological father’s own exit from solid ground. He never reached land again.
Will I?
The next morning Carol and Janet check in. They are happy to head our direction today—just a simple drive along the lake shore to meet your deceased brother’s daughter for the first time. Are they having a nervous breakdown too?
The doorbell rings and I answer, knowing all too well who is on the other side. I am visibly shaking and sweating but I’ve prepared them. “I’m a mess, I’m not myself.” Now all I can do is be exactly that—myself.
We embrace. My damp armpits staining the perfect moment long ago abandoned in my head. Dave politely hugs and then steps back to observe and hold the space. He welcomes this distraction from life’s heaviness. Today feels light, joyful even—and so very surreal. Tangible awkwardness melts away as we curl up on the sofa and share stories. Carol and Janet both sit like I do—feet tucked under our butts, leaning heavily to one side—our shared body language, uncanny. But more than physical similarities, I feel a vibrational match—from dissonance to consonance, a chord progression is brought home. All the invisible stuff that makes up a self — how one senses a room, the way thought travels through flesh, how memory lives and dies, and the ineffable summation of presence— this spiritual harmonic is louder than anything I comprehend through five senses.
Rich joins us the next day for a drive around Benzie county — a stomping ground for Brauer generations. He grabs me into a giant bear hug when we meet, then takes Dave into his arms with equal affection. I felt this same joy and ease over the phone, but in person, I regress into preverbal necessity. The longing for dad floods me. I feel five again. I want to curl up in his arms and stay forever.
We pile into a decades-loved Suburban. Carol’s husband Harry chauffeurs while Rich plays tour guide in the passenger seat. In the back, Carol and Janet nestle on either side of me; Dave a comfortable bookend to the chorus line of estrogen. When he isn’t holding or squeezing my hand, he photographs our grafting tree.
Benzie county a has been (and still is) a family vacation stomping ground for generations. Charlie had bought a home in the area so when the herds of family gathered for July 4th festivities, annual sauerkraut cook-offs and winter sports on the lake, he had a solitary escape. We drive by the humble, two-story house while Rich story-boards scenes:
“Ranger dragged a squirrel out of that tree and maimed it. Never one to waste anything, Chuck grilled it.”
“On these sharp curves in the road, cherry trucks would lose some harvest. Chuck round up the fugitives and made his signature Road Kill Cherry Pie.”
“Convinced television was rotting the human brain, Chuck took a shotgun to his right there.”
Rich’s stories are endless—it’s easy to see why he got into filmmaking—every tree, curb, shack and bend in the road reanimates his big brother into 24 frames per second. Charlie was mischievous, self-reliant, a lover of nature and the untamed. He welcomed surprise, he didn’t like being tied down, and he preferred the open road to a mortgage. He used his charisma and charm to keep family and friends close, but not too close. The tales are mostly funny, lighthearted and well rehearsed, as if they’ve been told around campfires, passed down through generations, eventually becoming the stuff of legends. And when you die young, legendary status is inevitable.
I enter—the space around me familiar but distant, aching like a phantom limb.
Our last day in Michigan, we reunite at the family cottage, its own immortal fame rivaling Charlie’s. Isabelle and Carl, my grandparents, believed family always came first, and reinforced this value by creating a home base for frequent family gatherings. The tiny, twelve-hundred square foot cabin is so storied I can almost hear its own beating, knotty pine heart. I enter—the space around me familiar but distant, aching like a phantom limb.
Two to three dozen family members assemble at the cottage every July, with Carl’s sisters’ families just a few doors down. Bunk beds, a kitchen the size of a small pontoon, chairs pushed up against every free wall — even though there are only seven of us now, I can hear the quilt of voices, the laughing children, the wet, bare feet pounding up and down narrow staircase, the sweet melody of reunion as Isabelle and Carl’s greatest wish is fulfilled. Their ghosts smile in every worn upholstery fiber, water ring and speck of dust.
I could walk around the interior perimeter in a minute or less, but the floor-to-ceiling family relics demand a museum pace—family portraits, framed poetry, hand-carved sculptures, illustrations, paintings, crayon-ings, a photo of Charlie sailing Fogbow, framed newspaper articles from the 60’s and 70’s on Charlie’s budding music career, a painted-portrait of Charlie…
…my deceased biological father is EVERYWHERE.
A cow hide hangs above a well-loved sofa and I draw near to decipher the scribbles. A hot tool hangs alongside it. Every blood relative and spouse is scribed into the great beast, a supple family tree with limbs unbound by direction and unlimited by reach. Dave and I scan and scan until we find Charlie’s name. There it is! in his own handwriting, scribed no less than thirty-five years ago. I touch it and try to wrinkle time—his hand and mine momentarily one.
And then, Rich hands me the tool.
Below Charlie’s signature, I sign my name, fire on flesh an alchemical forever. This family relic isn’t an erase board—belonging now unending. And then they pass the torch to Dave, a gesture more enduring than our unmarried status. I lean into his warm body as he extends his arm into our unquestioned future.
To say the Brauer’s know how to make a person feel welcome is the understatement of a lifetime.
I wobble and sway through it all, desperately wanting to grok the fullness of experience. But in truth, very little of me is present to all the tender details of our first minutes and hours and days together. There is laughter and lots of it. There are stories, more than I can remember. There are twinkling, teary eyes. Chocolate bars. Wind-whipped hair and nostalgia-whipped hearts. But what isn’t present in focus, I make up for with infinite gratitude. This radiant clan of humans extends to me an unwavering invitation into their lives. And they into mine. It is here, I am absolutely certain, that we meet.
When it’s time to say goodbye I am relieved. I need to get horizontal, close my eyes and shut out the world. I’ve never been one to do the movie goodbye, head craning 180 degrees, waving until loved ones are no longer in sight. But here I am—the frame widens: faces I’ve already memorized, sparkling eyes, generous smiles, then the family picnic table, the little yellow house, the one next to it, the shared driveway, Crystal Lake peeking out from behind the neighborhood, winking a knowing, sunset glitter. Windows down, I hear, “We love you Kimberly!” “We love you Dave!” We wave and wave and wave until the scene is called. Windshield wipers useless as we drive home in a sweet, teary blur.
I feel as though I’m getting to know & love Charlie and his family through your generous & poetic reflections! Thank you for capturing his essence so beautifully through your eloquent writing. He would be (as I am) SO proud to call you “our daughter”. 🥰
I love seeing these photos with your words. You are so beautiful. I want to love Charlie’s family right back! For greeting you with such enthusiasm and love. You’re a missing piece of their long loved puzzle.